Confidence
by absolutelycancerous
Summary: "We match now."


"We match now."

If that's not enough guilt to make his stomach plummet to his ass, the soft, tearful chuckle she gives certainly does it for him.

She's got her shirt off (a feat that has not been accomplished in the many months since Maka first came back home from the infirmary, chest free of bandages and stitches alike) and is sitting right before him in her little, plain-pink panties on the bed, pointing a finger between their chests. Soul suddenly feels naked in his boxers, feels like he did when the scar was first fresh and unhealed and ungodly **ugly**; a feeling Maka is now familiar with, a feeling he would never _dream_ for his girlfriend to _ever_ have to understand.

"No we don't," he mumbles, pulls at her arms and forces her closer, in order to kiss her face and feel the twitching in her cheeks as she fights to keep a smile for him, to not simply cry instead. She feels ugly, he understands, it's not a conscious feeling, it's one the seeps out from within, comes from injuries that prove your worth but take away flawless beauty. He might not think she's ugly (he most certainly does not!), but she does, and he knows there's little he can do to change her mind.

But he can sure as hell try.

"It's nice," she whispers, but it is a thin lie, thin like her voice that sounds ready to shatter into tears. "I like it—like this."

"Stop."

"I do."

"Stop it."

"But I really—!"

He's pinned her down, is looking at her with stone-set eyes and a gaze that makes her falter; she's been caught in a lie he himself has told many a time, and she feels stupid once she realizes if they really were so similar, she would have figured that out.

"Stop. Stop thinking about it."

And he peppers her in kisses, keeps her safe under him as he moves down, down, down until his lips hit gentle scar tissue, pink that reminds him of the color of her lips, softness that reflects how fragile she is—she's taken many a blow, but she's not indestructible, and this is the mark to prove it, a mark that makes him worry and fret and do a million other uncool things because he gets what it's like to be convinced of death, to see his partner blank with nothing but imminent silence.

But he doesn't think of that now, because now is the time to focus on her mark, her scar, the suffocating parasite that does terrible things to her self-esteem that Soul understands and wants to help with and make easier for her. A task he goes at whole-heartedly.

He kisses it again and again, leaves no surface of scarred flesh untouched by his lips and tongue and fingers and cheeks; nuzzles and kisses, caresses and soft words mumbled against her. Compliments, encouragements, anything and _everything_ he can think of, the words merely pour out of his mouth and onto her skin to settle into the cracks in her exterior where the wound had taken away her shell, her shield from the outside world to keep it from getting in and destroying her, bit by bit.

She asks him, nervous, if he's still up for sex, and tries to put her hands over herself when he says yes and moves away a bit, only to help get her underwear off. The action makes him move to lie against her, skin-on-skin from chest to hips. He gathers her up, curls his arms around her and holds her to him, kisses her cheek and hair and generally anywhere his lips can reach; convince, love, protect.

He grinds against her, teasing-but-not-quite-because-there's-a-point-to-i t (hah). His lips press against the shell of her ear, voice a low whisper.

"Nothing does to me what you do to me."

She whimpers. Pulls him close, finds she awfully likes the way her breasts feel pressed up against his chest, and nods—she hears his message. (Believing it is a bit of a different story.)

Soul slips himself inside, then settles atop her, still and careful as he does the same thing, gathers her up and holds her tight. He can't think of good words to say, words that make the little light go off and the self-consciousness go away, because not even he _himself_ has been able to rid of that beast. But he hopes the fact they're so closely intimate now, with part of him inside of her and the whole of her wrapped around him, is enough to prove that he's more than a little serious with his words.

"I love you."

She makes a little sound, a hiccup as she rolls her hips into his experimentally. "You, too."

Her fingers trace at jagged, white scar where she can reach (mostly the segment from shoulder to the middle of his chest) and does it with such tender, slow, loving motions that it makes him moan, makes him tuck his face against her and move inside her, just for the distraction, just to make sure he know this is all for her. It's slow sex, because there's too much meaning to his movements for him to be going fast; every pump of his hips is another example of his love for her, with or without the mark through her middle.

And then, her world is rocked, the ah-hah! moment is reached, because Maka pulls him impossibly close, forces a hand on his ass to press him against her as she manages, like the little warrior she is, to get in a good ride from beneath him, and sobs his name out as she does so.

Soul works a little harder, untangles himself from being _right up against her_ in order to get a little bit of leverage and rock into her more properly. He keeps his head low, tries to keep his voice level as he explains, for the _millionth_ time, it's never the outside that matters, ever, ever, ever, it's the _inside_. Words that make her tear up, and also smile and kiss him, open and deep, and swallow his groans as he hits his peek with a grind of his hips deep against her own.

He moves so as to not crush her tiny self, and ends up with her koala-clinging to him, kissing at his face and thanking him, over and over, nonstop. Soul, after realizing his post-coitus exhaustion, pats her cheek, gets a hand on her ass to pull her against him, and mumbles, "I get that you're appreciative and, that's really, _really_ great, but tell me in the _morning_ about it, a'ight?"

And she bursts into exhausted laughter, bangs sticking to her forehead and cheeks an exerted-color of pink that only reminds him of sex. He smiles, kisses her eyebrow, and falls asleep, cheek pressed into her chest, against the scar that is welcomed on his beloved.


End file.
